Earth To
by nneurosis
Summary: Rory's at his stag. The Doctor isn't. Slight AU, 11/Amy if you squint.


Author's Note: The first scene is a tag to the "Meanwhile in the TARDIS" deleted scene from Flesh and Stone (YouTube). The second takes place in an AU established by the first.

* * *

><p><em>- a matter of when<em>

The TARDIS jumps, groans and creaks with threatening force, undulates on a ninety-degree angle, and then putters out quietly.

Amy pauses for breath, her screaming ceased, and then curses.

"Words, Amelia," he admonishes across the now-darkened console.

"Really? You're going to scold me for cussing, after your time machine just quits—"

But he's not listening; he's gone into an intensive dash-about, circling the deck twice to jam buttons, wrench levers and twist knobs. The main lights begin to flicker on, one color at a time.

"Is everything okay?" she asks.

He taps a few keys on the typewriter.

"Doctor," she attempts.

He snatches up the phone and holds it to his ear. He slams it down a half-second later, brow contracted.

"Hello! Earth to!" she cries.

He laps her again.

On his next rotation, she sticks her foot out, and he flies briefly before catching himself on the railing.

Clinging to the metal guard, he blinks several times, as if it might explain the predicament, and then looks up. She's reclining against the console, smiling pleasantly down on him. Her legs, impossibly, stretch the whole width of the walk.

"You've weaponized them," he croaks, careful not to let a glance become a gaze, or a gaze become a stare, and clamors to his feet.

She giggles. He straightens his jacket, and then his bow tie—_indignantly._He gives her a look that could peel paint, but she isn't lips twitch and the left brow quirks upward. Only language the TARDIS doesn't know.

It matters not. Never has.

Instantaneously, a grin cracks his face and he's recovered.

"Everything's great!" he chirps, and turns on his heel, the tails of his jacket lagging a moment behind, unable to keep up. "A small malfunction. She's alright, always has been, always will be." He runs the back of his hand along the console, which Amy watches. Her lips are still twitching. "Possibly a gravity pocket. Or Newton's spilled his cashews—again. He eats them too fast, I told his mother that—don't know how they ever got so many cashews, though. Perhaps I ought to bring them some more. Perhaps that's where they got them from!"

With the commotion over, she's waiting. Waiting for the handcuffs to be slid on, waiting for the policeman to drive her home.

"Blimey, perhaps I oughtn't bring them some more, though it wouldn't really be some _more_, would it? Not if I were simply bringing them the original cashews—oh, don't you love a good timeline reversal? I do, brightens my days, honestly."

Amy exhales. It feels like it's been hours since she last did. Her eyes don't leave the floor. She tries to focus on what's being said, but it doesn't work, because, she realizes, he's stopped talking. Her head snaps up and she finds that he's staring over at her, his expression one of consternation.

"What?" she demands, as if she didn't like to be stared at.

"I've forgotten something."

"Have you?"

He stalks towards her, chin jutting further forward than usual, squinting. "What is it?" he demands.

"What's what?"

"What I've forgotten!"

"Dunno, you're the one who forgot it." She smirks, and he glares.

"I will remember, Pond," declares the Doctor. "It's just a matter of when."

The lips twitch more, little spasms that flash words he doesn't know and leave sizzling anomalies across his vision, and she leans in a little before they part in an almost-whisper: "Okay."

- _isaac_

"I suppose I'm just bit disappointed, is all. I thought it was going to hit him in the head, and he just stares at it? Rubbish. Almost threw one at him to compensate."

He chuckles and turns the key in the lock, pushing open the TARDIS doors. She trails him inside and they're greeted by the warm hum of the ship.

"So it was a let-down, then?" he inquires over his shoulder.

"Sir Isaac and his mum and his cashews?" (He had a massive nose, Sir Isaac Newton. Just massive. Amy tried not to let it remind her of Anyone.) "No. Some stunning build-up, just a bit lacking in the pay-off." She has to think for moment. "So—yeah, I suppose it was a let-down."

"History—_time_," he corrects loftily, plummeting cross-legged to a seat. "Is mediated as much by people and their stories as is it by those of us who have the capability to actually change it."

"So you're saying we make things up." Her back to him, to the console, gripping the railing, she looks up to the dome of the ceiling, but not at it. There's too much space between it, and her, too much space in here for two… (two what?)— There's too much space in here for two.

"I'm saying you twist the truth, a bit, which is different."

She shrugs. A moment passes silently, but he's snapped it up before she has time to stop him.

"Rory."

Her eyes close for a fraction of a second and are open when she turns to face him, her grimace ill-concealed.

"What about him?"

"I remembered. It was Rory." He stands and strides to the dashboard. "We were going to pick him up." The switch flipping has begun, she notes anxiously. "And somewhere romantic, for you two. What did I mention? Was it Venice? Venice is good, I think."

"Come _on_," she groans.

"Come on what, Pond? You'll have to be more specific." His hand is dangerously close to the lever she knows makes it fly.

"Please."

Finally, he gazes up at her across the console, his expression inscrutable. She tries to smile. He doesn't flinch. They wait, both for the other to break, and it's a toss-up as always because nobody, _nobody_, does stubborn like the Doctor and Amy Pond.

It's her turn today.

"Fine! I'm sorry." Huffing, she folds her arms over her chest and gives him a good glare. "_Sorry_for implying that you, are a Casanova cosmonaut."

"Thank you, Amelia," he says simply, and goes back to the controls, but she continues.

"A flying fetishist."

He halts.

"A traveling trollop."

She receives a very pronounced scowl.

"The manslut in the moon!" They both gasp—him in horror, her with prideful discovery.

"Oh, that one's the best," she says. "If you aren't going to applaud for that one, then I will." And she does.

"I am setting the coordinates to Leadworth—"

"No!" She grips his arm and he makes an effort to shake her off, but not a very good one. "No—okay, okay, sorry. Last hurrah. Gotcha!" Her hands go up, a sign of surrender, and he scrutinizes her out of the corner of his eye.

A long, pale finger accosts her. "Do you promise, Pond?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die."

"Terrible idiom. Okay," he sighs, and Amy grins, and retreats to sit, her hold on his arm finally relinquished. For a split-second he gazes at the rumple it leaves in his jacket sleeve, then snaps into captain mode, back to fiddling with the dash and traipsing about.

"So, what we doing next?" she inquires.

"The same, which is…" He shakes his head. "Never the same, so forget that, it's no good. We're doing something completely different! Brand new. Never before seen. Not just once in a lifetime, once in all the lifetimes!" He points at her. "And it's yours. Amy Pond."

She laughs and it fills the whole room, the cavernous chamber, it goes up and up, untouched by Isaac's proposition. She feels silly: nothing is too big for two. Not even the universe.

"Mine?"

"Yes!" he exclaims, not a trace of hesitation in sight, not a tiny scrap. The Doctor smiles. It gives him the momentum he needs for the reminder, the piece of string he'll tie round her finger and the ten he'll tie around all of his: "And back in time for stuff."


End file.
